The Key Role of Agricultural Schools in Africa

Since 2004, “agricultural schools”1 have provided the opportunity to teach at-risk and orphaned children the agricultural techniques needed to improve their daily life in rural areas. Already established in eleven African countries,2 these schools are playing an increasingly important role in Sub-Saharan Africa. The region counts 40 million orphans, 11.4 million of whom lost their parents to AIDS.

The schools fill a knowledge gap and provide these children the means to ensure their self-sufficiency, for, as Marcela Villarreal, Director of the Gender, Equity and Rural Employment Division at the FAO, points out, “without their parents, they become more vulnerable to hunger and poverty, disease, conflict, sexual exploitation, forced migration and environmental degradation. The schools are an attempt to give orphans the means and the confidence to survive in an often very difficult environment.”

Consequently, training covers crop cycles, local production techniques, pests and plant diseases as well as the prevention of diseases such as HIV/AIDS and psycho-social support.

This approach is an illustration of what Professor Marc Gentilini (Vice-President of the Académie de Médecine, member of France’s Economic and Social Council and former President of the French Red Cross) referred to at a symposium hosted by WOAgri in October 2006: “Caring, educating and feeding are the three ‘legs’ essential to sustainable development.”